1. Field of the Invention
The inventions disclosed and taught herein relate generally to a method and system for providing an international electronic payment service, and, more particularly, to a method and system for providing an international electronic payment service using mobile phone authentication, in which an electronic payment agent network server enabling an operation to be performed in cooperation with mobile communication companies all over the world, that is, an International Payment Network (IPN) server, is constructed in order to enable the transactions of products (including content) to be promptly and conveniently conducted between a user and a seller, that is, a content provider (CP), located in different countries, thus allowing the user to pay for products using his or her mobile phone.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, interest in electronic payment methods using mobile phones has gradually increased all over the world. The fields of use of electronic payment methods using mobile phones have rapidly extended to payments for the transaction of a variety of products and payments of service fees, as well as payments for Internet content.
In conventional technology, in the case of electronic transactions between a user and a seller located in different countries, international credit cards (for example, VISA, MasterCard, etc.) have been generally used when making payments for the transactions of online content as well as typical products. Moreover, in the case of such international credit cards, since a scheme for prompting a user to personally enter a credit card number and a password is adopted, making a payment is rendered convenient. However, when a credit card number and a password are accidentally leaked to a third party, a serious loss of property and a serious security risk may result. Further, since most transactions using international credit cards are related to transactions of actual products rather than to transactions of content, a problem was pointed out in that commissions for the transactions of various types of content purchased at relatively low cost are comparatively high.
In particular, most of different types of content which are traded online between countries are low-cost items (for example, the price of MP3 music content is below $3 (USD), and the price of movie content is typically below $10 (USD)). The main consumer class is limited to persons in their thirties or younger, and thus a lot of people who do not hold credit cards are distributed in the main consumer class. Therefore, when content is intended to be purchased through online transactions, such international credit cards do not form a large proportion of the used payment means. That is, since online users all over the world do not find payment methods suitable for them, they cannot purchase certain desired products (including product content) online in the majority of cases.
Therefore, markets for international online products (including content) having infinite growth potentiality in the world have emphasized the necessity for an international electronic payment service scheme, which can satisfy the convenience with which users make payments by realizing simpler and more convenient transaction methods, and which can improve the security of making payments through more secure transaction methods.
The inventions disclosed and taught herein are directed to an improved system for providing methods and associated systems for providing international electronic payment services using mobile phone authentication methods.